This week’s been all about surviving whilst being exposed to existentialism, but bare with me because I’ve found entertainment in the content I’ve consumed.
Linghun by Ai Jiang was my #1
This is a short book that I would recommend to anyone who isn’t afraid to delve into thinking about death. It deals with the concept of still being able to see your loved ones even after they’ve passed away if you manage to live inside a community that has some sort of power that allows for such dynamics. And yes, it’s dark, but it’s incredibly human and made me see death withing a realm that, in our day to day lives, is easy to forget about since it requires more reason than emotion.
#2 goes to IT: Welcome to Derry
Don’t ask me about how faithful this adaptation is because I haven’t read the books, but I am thoroughly enjoying this series. I loved the most recent IT movies and so that’s why I was excited to watch this prequel to the clown I’ve seen the most of in life, probably. Currently the series has a lot of subplots that have made it interesting as an expansion to the universe, but it’s taken a bit more for my taste to show us Pennywise, not to mention that the CGI has been a bit… to much. I get it, having technology that allows them to show in such detail the things they’ve shown is cool, but I do agree with a common commentary I’ve seen online about preferring a more practical effects approach to these scenes that relies more on different storytelling devices to produce fear than just go for the shock value.
But the most interesting thing for me watching this series has been the themes of death and seeing things that terrify you, almost as if everything was a ghost in a way.
I can’t wait to see where this leads to, prior to the movies, and in the meantime this is one of my favorite things to do before going to bed every Sunday.
Finally, the queen Alessia Cara takes spot #3 with her latest album, Love & Hyperbole
Alessia is one of my favorite artists since 2016 because of a Sam Kolder video (oh the good old travel YouTube videos) that featured one of her songs. Since then I’ve been following her career not as closely as I've done with other artists, but enough to see her growth as one and also how faithful she is to her craft.
I heard Love & Hyperbole earlier this year and found it to be a deeper album than I was expecting, and though this is not dealing with death as the other two, it is dealing with lots of love and self-discovery themes that relate to life, and there’s no death without it. Alessia is a Grammy winner, she’s know by many, and yet I still think she’s underrated.
Notes:
No Instagram yet, but I am close. I spent a ridiculous amount of time dealing with technical issues for what I want to do, until I realized it’s easier to do it the manual way. So that’s coming this week.
No embeds because they don’t look good in emails. Plain old links it is.